Moodle: Course Layout - One Section at a Time

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A common issue on many Moodle courses is the plethora of items that end up on the "home" page of the course.  When a person starts building a course, they don't have much so begin with a habit of adding every item on the main page.  Over time, this becomes a monstrous beast, that takes a LONG time to load and eons to scroll through.  There are several methods that can be used to eliminate the "scroll of death" - some take more work than others.  This week I'll show one way to help students focus in on the current topic, and away from an endless stream of content.

Viewing a Course by One Section 
First - a caveat - you need to be putting content into topical areas for this to work.  If you have everything in the top content box...this won't help.

This takes only one step.  Go into your Course Settings, and under the course format change the Course Layout to "Show one section per page:"



When in non-editing mode or viewing the course as a student, you will now see a list of topics, along with the types of activities in each topic:


Clicking on a topic will take you into the topic, and only display the materials/activities that are part of that topic (your top area material still displays - that will on every view).  To change which topical area you are looking at, there are navigation links at both the top and bottom of the course content:



Additionally, you have a "Jump" drop-down to move back to the Main Menu or other topical areas as needed/wanted:


That's it!  One setting, but if you use it you may want to provide a little direction to your users so they know how to navigate the course with this different layout.

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